Our planet’s continents are not static, they are in constant motion due to plate tectonics – so over millions of years, they merged into giant continents and then separated from each other. The structure of the ocean floor in the ocean basin left behind by the breakup of Argoland suggests that the continent drifted northwest and may have ended up somewhere in the island region of present-day Southeast Asia, but it has not yet been found exactly where.
Since geologists had only found small continental fragments, researchers from Utrecht University turned to the geology of Southeast Asia to find clues about Argoland’s fate. IFL Science.
Using reconstruction models and field data from several islands, including Sumatra, Borneo, and the Andaman Islands, they discovered that Argoland was never one connected continent; About 300 million years ago, it began to break apart to form what researchers have dubbed the “Argopelago.”
The situation in Southeast Asia is very different from places like Africa and South America, where the continent is neatly divided into two parts. Argoland is divided into many different pieces
– explained Eldert Advocaat, one of the authors of the study. These fragments are now hidden under large parts of Indonesia and Myanmar, where they arrived at about the same time.
The researchers also found that Argoland’s disintegration accelerated 215 million years ago, which explains why the ‘continent’ was so fragmented and made it more difficult for the team to put the pieces back together.
We were literally dealing with islands of information, which is why our research took so long. We spent seven years piecing together the puzzle
Advocaat added.
They weren’t looking for anything
It may have taken a long time, but as study co-author Douwe van Hinsbergen explains, it’s important to know how the lost continents became lost.
These reconstructions are vital for understanding processes such as biodiversity development and climate, or indeed for finding raw materials. And also at a more fundamental level: understanding the formation of mountain ranges or the development of the forces driving plate tectonics; into two closely related phenomena
He said. Incidentally, Argoland is not the only “lost” continent that was eventually found; We recently reported on Balkanatoria, which played a very important role in the invasion of Europe by Asian mammals 34 million years ago.
